Prague, Czech Republic

The building is painted a faded yellow, the colour custard powder turns after years in a dusty cupboard. On its worn façade, dark brooding Germanic script tries to convey something vital, its meaning lost however by my lack of Czech.

Crossing the empty street with its thin sliver of tarnished tramlines I wonder what I am doing here. Through the door and sitting down, flicking though a menu written in Czech, the feeling stays with me. After all, what do I know about Eastern Europe, its individual countries and the myriad of intricate customs attached to each one? As I get the waiters attention and nod my head vigorously in the direction of pig drawn upon the menu I know the answer: Nothing.

Why Prague, a city I knew only from picture postcards and others hazy recollections of drunken ramblings. I came here with Alex, his wife and “Jelly”, travelling through rolling plains and past sluggish windmills, retreating from the regal expenses of Vienna. The car chugged along and urban sprawl was replaced by grape orchards, Austria for the Czech republic and I started to become slightly homesick.

Prague youth hostel, a dank door sunk into a mouldering edifice of a once proud building. Alex carries my bag while Mike smokes outside and avoids this traveller’s tomb. Once inside and with Alex gone pottering down the street, old skills start to emerge and my brain begins to work double time.

Ten minutes later. I walk briskly, swerving around gothic towers and small billboards, chatting with my new friends, two sisters from Australia and an American medical student. In the hostel I had introduced myself and quickly persuaded them to let me “tag along” to better digs as we head through Prague, taking the escalators downwards into the gloom of a communist era subway. As we decent into the concrete depths they debate constantly, the student trying in vain to convince me that sliding downwards will give him the orthodontic experience he craves and is thus a necessary endeavour.

Inside the next hostel and again its almost a reflex, passport out and open to the photo page, money in hand, take the room key, test the bed and drop the backpack. This is my life, this series of actions and reactions, pure spontaneity as I sit down and look at my map. My “map” is one of the whole of Europe and shows large cities and rivers and yet it is the best I have. After dinner I meet another American and a Russian crayfish scientist and with ice cream to share we stand on a bridge and look down upon the Danube, content just to be silent and think.